Telling Stories: A little special goes a long way
You want your characters to be special. That’s fine, that’s understandable, that’s even commendable. So you make your first character a half-dragon spawn of the realm of faeries, and…
Well, no. No, we’re already clocking out, and no, it’s not just because you’re doing so in a game with neither dragons nor faeries. It’s because your character is too special. Your character has broken the Specialometer. It’s impossible to relate to them any longer, they’re just too special for us to properly internalize what their deal is.
So let’s talk about people who are special in small ways. About picking out one or two obvious things that aren’t common and then building a character around that rather than trying to be The Most Unique Snowflake Ever. Because wouldn’t you know it, being less special can actually make your character feel more special in the long run than being a half-dragon faerie spawn. Unless you’re playing a superhero game, maybe, but even then.
Challenge Accepted: What you’re wading into
If it were just this, it would admittedly be a little boring. it would also be consistent.
Can we talk about Frog Fractions? I want to talk about Frog Fractions.
If you haven’t played Frog Fractions, that’s easily rectified – it’s free right here. Aside from absurd humor, the developer’s stated goal for the game was to get back to a time before players knew everything about a game, to get back a sense of wonder and surprise when things keep changing on you as you play the game. It’s not really a spoiler to say that the basic version of the game that you start with isn’t what you end up playing when all is said and done (hint: the dragon can go down, too).
Don’t get me wrong, I think Frog Fractions is a great little piece of art. But as a pure game, it sort of comes down to a series of brain farts. It surprises you with its gameplay, yes, but that’s because it doesn’t deliver anything close to what it promised to on the tin, and the real challenge is figuring out what random direction to head in next. So how do you interpret the challenge in a game where the whole schtick is changing what you’re actually doing?
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy III, part 1
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
Final Fantasy III is why this project is what it is.
We’re now entirely out of the realm of repeats from stuff I’ve written before; everything going down in these columns is totally live, so I’m not yet sure how long we’ll be exploring the world of whatever-planet-this-game-takes-place-upon. But we’re doing so on the note of exploring a game that had, easily, the most convoluted trip across the waters of any title in the Final Fantasy franchise. Which is a little weird when you consider that it more or less finished the foundational work started by Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II.
See, Final Fantasy III never came out in America. Sure, Final Fantasy II took a long time to come over in the form of Final Fantasy Origins, but that version of the game was a strict graphical update and the mechanics were identical. The original form of Final Fantasy III, however, has never been released – and at this point, odds are low that it ever will be, because the remake sort of has two sequels and is the general port of call. I told you this was convoluted.
DRM has changed, DRM has stayed the same
All turns quiet; I have been here before.
A couple of weeks ago, I had a really good week on game services. Origin was giving away Plants vs. Zombies for free, so at some point I can now do what 80% of human beings on the planet have done and play it, thereby allowing myself to enter into conversations with others once more. Transistor also came out, and thanks to the kindness of my brother I also was able to download and play that all the way through. If you need a thumbnail review, it’s good.
I was talking with a friend about all of this, however, and the subject of Steam came up, since that’s really your main option for buying Transistor at this point. That led into a discussion of Steam as a form of generally benevolent DRM and how having DRM, however benevolent, is somewhat insidious. There is, strictly speaking, nothing that will stop Valve from cancelling your account, deleting all your game, and sending you a picture of a squirrel getting run over by a truck.
Which is true. But let’s face it – we’ve been dealing with DRM as long as we’ve been dealing with games. It’s not whether it’s restrictive or not now, it’s just about how it restricts us.
Demo Driver 8: Alien Rage (#85)
Four unlikable protagonists rolled into one! How can you lose?
The first installment I did of this feature was about Alien Breed 2: Assault. I wouldn’t say I critiqued that game harshly for being generic, but the acknowledgement was there. Yet for all that, the nature of it didn’t make the game bad. It was what it was, and it certainly would win no prizes for originality, but I try hard to point out that there’s a distinct difference between games that scratch an itch I don’t care for (DRIVE ’07, Eschalon Book 1), games that are generic but solid (Alien Breed 2: Assault), and games that are actually not very good.
I bring this up because Alien Rage is sipping from the same well as Alien Breed 2: Assault, but where the former feels kind of bland but eminently playable and solid, Alien Rage is a game that made me lose interest before I had even gotten to shooting anything. I almost wish I had stopped there, because I knew it wasn’t going to get better, but in the words of Macbeth, bear-like I fought the course. It is a game best used as an object lesson about why “generic” doesn’t mean “bad” but it certainly doesn’t mean good either.
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 